Worrisome sight at AC Moore

My wife had the afternoon off yesterday, I had all day off and she needed some pumpkin-colored wool yarn. Off to AC Moore we go.

While strolling through the store, I noticed something I hadn't seen before in such great quantities: flag cases. Hundreds of them. Nice cherrywood and oak boxes with glass fronts in the exact size needed to hold a folded military funeral flag.

Very few active-duty troops have these. A soldier who buys a flag does one of three things with it: flies it outside, displays it on a staff or hangs it on his wall. We don't keep folded flags in our rooms--it's too much like death.

And the saddest part was that people had them in their carts.

Sue's father passed - We are losing the last of the WW-II generation these days. A form got filed with the post office, and a flag arrived. Sue's nephew has it now.

wheeled in cases and cases of bankers boxes on palettes. We all knew, right then, what was coming.

away at a rate of thousands per day... and each older Vet who passes also gets a flag. The many people buying might be purchasing these for their fathers' or grandfathers' flags? I know I would someday like to get a nice case for my father's flag (he served with Patton's Army in Germany).

Come to Fayetteville and walk through any store's parking lot.

Some of the popular bumper stickers seen on cars with Fort Bragg registration decals:

* various incarnations of the Jesus-fish-shaped ribbon...the yellow one that says Support our Troops, the flag-pattern one that says God Bless the USA, ones that say God Bless My Soldier, God Protect My Daddy and other pro-troops stickers.

* "Half of my heart is in Iraq"

* "Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran"

In your town, a flag-waving bumper sticker is probably on a chickenhawk's car; in mine, there's a real good chance it's on a soldier's car.

The WWII Greatest Generation is passing...but I don't think most of these cases are intended for those men. They're intended for the guys who wind up on the front page of the local paper under the headline "82nd Airborne soldiers killed in Iraq." They run an article under this head so often, the head is kept as a piece of boilerplate on the pasteboard of the front page layout template.